Despite Alert, Flawed Wiring Still Kills GI’s
    By James Risen
    The New York Times

    Sunday 04 May 2008

    Washington - In October 2004, the United States Army issued an urgent bulletin to commanders across Iraq, warning them of a deadly new threat to American soldiers. Because of flawed electrical work by contractors, the bulletin stated, soldiers at American bases in Iraq had received severe electrical shocks, and some had even been electrocuted.

    The bulletin, with the headline “The Unexpected Killer,” was issued after the horrific deaths of two soldiers who were caught in water - one in a shower, the other in a swimming pool - that was suddenly electrified after poorly grounded wiring short-circuited.

    ”We’ve had several shocks in showers and near misses here in Baghdad, as well as in other parts of the country,” Frank Trent, an expert with the Army Corps of Engineers, wrote in the bulletin. “As we install temporary and permanent power on our projects, we must ensure that we require contractors to properly ground electrical systems.”

    Since that warning, at least two more American soldiers have been electrocuted in similar circumstances. In all, at least a dozen American military personnel have been electrocuted in Iraq, according to the Pentagon and Congressional investigators.

    While several deaths have been attributed to inadvertent contact with power lines under battlefield conditions, the Army bulletin said that five deaths over the preceding year had apparently been caused by faulty grounding, and the circumstances of others have not been fully explained by the Army. Many more soldiers have been injured by shocks, Pentagon officials and soldiers say.

    The accidental deaths and close calls, which are being investigated by Congress and the Defense Department’s inspector general, raise new questions about the oversight of contractors in the war zone, where unjustified killings by security guards, shoddy reconstruction projects and fraud involving military supplies have spurred previous inquiries.

    American electricians who worked for KBR, the Houston-based defense contractor that is responsible for maintaining American bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, said they repeatedly warned company managers and military officials about unsafe electrical work, which was often performed by poorly trained Iraqis and Afghans paid just a few dollars a day.

    One electrician warned his KBR bosses in his 2005 letter of resignation that unsafe electrical work was “a disaster waiting to happen.” Another said he witnessed an American soldier in Afghanistan receiving a potentially lethal shock. A third provided e-mail messages and other documents showing that he had complained to KBR and the government that logs were created to make it appear that nonexistent electrical safety systems were properly functioning.

    KBR itself told the Pentagon in early 2007 about unsafe electrical wiring at a base near the Baghdad airport, but no repairs were made. Less than a year later, a soldier was electrocuted in a shower there.

    ”I don’t feel like they did their job,” Carmen Nolasco Duran of La Puente, Calif., said of Pentagon officials. Her brother, Specialist Marcos O. Nolasco, was electrocuted at a base in Baiji in May 2004 while showering. “They hired these contractors and yet they didn’t go and double-check that the work was fine.”

    The Defense Contract Management Agency, which is responsible for supervising maintenance work by contractors at American bases in Iraq, defended its performance. In a written statement, the agency said it had no information that staff members “were aware” of the Army alert or “failed to take appropriate action in response to unsafe conditions brought to our attention.”

    Keith Ernst, who stepped down Wednesday as the agency’s director, said, though, that the agency was “stretched too thin” in Iraq and that the small number of contract officers did not have expertise in dealing with so-called life support contracts, like that awarded to KBR to provide food, shelter and building maintenance. “We don’t have the technical capability for overseeing life support systems,” he said.

    For its part, KBR, which until last year was known as Kellogg, Brown and Root and was a subsidiary of Halliburton, denied that any lapses by the company had led to the electrocutions of American soldiers. “KBR’s commitment to employee safety and the safety of those the company serves is unwavering,” said a spokeswoman, Heather Browne. “KBR has found no evidence of a link between the work it has been tasked to perform and the reported electrocutions.”

    Ms. Browne declined to respond to the specific accounts of former KBR electricians.

    Those electricians have a ready response to anyone who suggests that poor electrical work might be considered an unavoidable cost of war. “The excuse KBR always used was, ‘This is a war zone - what do you expect?’ ” recalled Jeffrey Bliss, an Ohio electrician who worked for the company in Afghanistan in 2005 and 2006. “But if you are going to do the work, you have got to do it safe.”

    Since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, tens of thousands of American troops have been housed in pre-existing Iraqi government buildings, some of them dangerously dilapidated. As part of its $30 billion contract with the Pentagon in Iraq, KBR was required to repair and upgrade many of the buildings, including their electrical systems. The company handles maintenance for 4,000 structures and 35,000 containerized housing units in the war zone, the Pentagon said.

    Lawmakers and government investigators say it is now clear that the Bush administration outsourced so much work to KBR and other contractors in Iraq that the agencies charged with oversight have been overwhelmed. The Defense Contracting Management Agency has more than 9,000 employees, but it has only 60 contract officers in Iraq and 30 in Afghanistan to supervise nearly 18,000 KBR employees in Iraq and 4,400 in Afghanistan handling base maintenance.

    ”All the contract officers can do is check the paperwork,” said one agency official, who asked not to be identified. While about 600 military officers supplement the contract officers, Mr. Ernst said, the soldiers are not adequately trained for the task.

    The Army has provided little detailed information about the electrocutions, other than to say late Friday that 10 soldiers had been electrocuted in Iraq. A House panel has also reported that two marines died similarly.

    In the civilian work force, about 250 workers died from electrocution in the United States in 2006, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    According to the Army warning bulletin, two deaths occurred 10 days apart in May 2004 at different bases in northern Iraq.

    Staff Sgt. Christopher L. Everett, 23, of the Texas National Guard was electrocuted in September 2005 while power-washing a Humvee at Camp Taqaddum, in central Iraq near Falluja. His mother, Larraine McGee said Army officials had told her that the equipment he was using was connected to a generator that was not properly grounded, and that soldiers had previously complained of shocks.

    ”We were told that as a result of his death all the generators were being repaired and that it wouldn’t happen again,” Ms. McGee said. “But if it is still going on, something’s not right.”

    The most recent fatality occurred on Jan. 2 in Baghdad, when Staff Sgt. Ryan D. Maseth, a Green Beret, died in a shower after an improperly grounded water pump short-circuited.

    Nearly a year earlier, KBR issued a technical report to the contracting agency citing safety concerns related to the grounding and wiring in the building in the Radwaniyah Palace Complex, where Sergeant Maseth’s unit, the Army Fifth Special Forces Group, was housed.

    Another soldier said in an interview that he was repeatedly shocked in the shower in December 2007 and submitted requests for repairs. But nothing was done until the day after Sergeant Maseth’s death, when the defense agency ordered KBR to correct the problem, according to Pentagon documents.

    Cheryl Harris, Sergeant Maseth’s mother, said in an interview that the Army initially told her that her son had taken an electrical appliance into the shower with him. Later, she said, officials told her that investigators had found electrical wires hanging down around the shower. She said she had been skeptical of both accounts and learned the truth only after repeatedly questioning Army officials.

    Her family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against KBR, the only such claim brought in any of the electrical deaths.

    ”I knew Ryan would not get into a shower with an electrical appliance, and having wires hanging overhead didn’t make sense,” said Ms. Harris, of Cranberry Township, Pa. “My biggest question is really, why would KBR do a safety inspection, know about the electrical problems and not alert the troops?”

    Long before Sergeant Maseth’s death, KBR electricians were complaining about the dangers of unsafe electrical work at bases.

    In 2006, John McLain was working as a KBR electrician at the United States regional embassy compound in Hilla, south of Baghdad, when he made a disturbing discovery. A KBR quality control inspector had recently cited employees there for failing to file quarterly ground resistance testing logs - reports on whether the wiring in the upgraded embassy building was properly grounded and safe.

    Mr. McLain soon realized that the testing was not being conducted, because the building had never been grounded, though KBR and at least one Iraqi subcontractor were supposed to install proper safeguards during a renovation the previous year. Mr. McLain said he had sent a series of increasingly blunt memos and e-mail warnings about the safety hazards to KBR officials.

    Mr. McLain said other KBR electricians later created logs that incorrectly made it appear that the grounding system existed. KBR fired him in 2007 after he told a visiting defense contracting agency official about his concerns. His candor proved useless, however. Mr. McLain said that the contracting agency official showed no interest. “He said, ‘I’m not an electrician; I don’t know what you are talking about,’ “Mr. McLain recalled.

    Noris Rogers, who worked for KBR in Afghanistan in 2005, said he repeatedly complained to his supervisors that electrical work at Camp Eggers, the American military’s command base in Kabul, Afghanistan, did not meet the requirements of the company’s Pentagon contract.

    Mr. Bliss, who saw a soldier in Qalat, Afghanistan, get a severe shock from an electrical box that was not supposed to be charged, said his KBR bosses mocked him for raising safety issues. They were “not giving the Army what it needed,” he said, “and not giving the soldiers what they deserved.”

A Post sent to me today regarding the scandal the Brits are weathering concerning the deep sixing of an investigation into alleged Saudi Corruption, (the Serious Fraud Office is accused of unlawfully stopping the BAE-Saudi Corruption Investigation in December of 2006),  from someone who read it on http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/pdf/document/Jrmedia.pdf

It sounds ominously familiar compared to what’s been happening stateside, having certain government officials and special interests meddling in matters of law enforcement and justice. .  GFS

—————————————————————————————–

Selected Quotes from UK newspapers

on High Court ruling of 10 April 2008 that the Serious Fraud Office acted

unlawfully in stopping the BAE-Saudi corruption investigation in December

2006.

“What started as a David versus Goliath challenge, brought by a group of activists

dismissed as “treehuggers”, on Thursday [10 April 2008] culminated in a damning

condemnation of the [UK] government that is likely to reverberate for years to come.”

Financial Times

“Even the most optimistic of campaigners from Corner House Research and the

Campaign Against Arms Trade could not have expected to hear one of Britain’s most

senior judges castigate officials – including a former prime minister – for placing the

entire criminal justice system under threat.”

Financial Times

“There are moments when a statement of the obvious cuts through the fog of selfinterest

and evasion that clings to much of politics, and clears the way for a genuine

fresh start. The High Court’s stunning condemnation of the decision to abandon an

investigation into alleged bribery by BAE Systems is such a moment. ‘No one,’ Lord

Justice Moses and Mr Justice Sullivan declared, ‘whether in this country or outside, is

entitled to interfere with the course of our justice.’ It should never have fallen to their

lordships to point this out.”

The Times

“The High Court . . . said there was no proof at all that British national security would

have been put at risk by anything the Saudis threatened to do. The purpose of the

threat was simply designed ‘to prevent the SFO from pursuing the course of

investigation he had chosen to adopt’. In that, the judgment went on tersely, ‘it

achieved its purpose’. “

The Independent

” . . . as the judges commented, there is ‘the suspicion’ that the security issue was ‘a

useful pretext for ditching an SFO inquiry that was harming commercial interests.”

The Guardian

“. . . the government leapt on ‘national security’ as a pretext to kill off an inquiry that

threatened bothersome diplomatic, political and economic consequences. “

The Observer

” . . . the government has drafted legislation [draft Constitutional Renewal Bill] to

enshrine in law the Attorney General’s right to stop criminal proceedings on grounds

of ‘national security’, while surrendering the right to meddle in all other cases. In other

words, the government will relinquish a power it never used and strengthen one it has

clearly demonstrated it can abuse.”

The Observer

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Go to Original

    Contractors Gone Wild
    By Bruce Falconer
    Mother Jones

    Friday 02 May 2008

Theft, hookers, melting down Iraqi gold to make cowboy spurs - all in a day’s work for private military contractors in Iraq?

    Allegations of widespread mismanagement and corruption among private contractors in Iraq are nothing new; if anything, tales of cronyism, over-billing, and embezzlement have become so frequent that our national tolerance for them seems only to have increased as the Iraq War has drawn on. Even so, the testimony earlier this week of three whistleblowers before the Senate’s Democratic Policy Committee (DPC) stands out for the sheer outrageousness of their accusations - namely that U.S. private contractors looted Iraqi palaces and ministries, stole military equipment, fenced supplies destined for U.S. troops, and even operated a prostitution ring that may have contributed to the death of fellow contractor. Yet despite its focus on such salacious matters as sex and corruption, the session earned little media attention.

    The first to testify was Frank Cassaday, a former KBR employee who worked as an ice plant operator in Fallujah in 2004 and 2005. “Ice was a very valuable commodity in Iraq that was regularly stolen and bartered for other goods,” he told the committee. He recalled how a convoy of U.S. Marines, in preparation for an operation that would take them outside the wire for several days, requested 28 bags of ice to keep their food fresh in the desert heat. They received only three. “The ice foreman was cheating the troops out of ice at the same time that he was trading the ice for DVDs, CDs, food, and other items at the Iraqi shops across the street,” Cassaday said. “This foreman would change the ice tally sheets at the distribution area I worked in to make it seem as though we had handed out more ice to the Marines than we actually did.”

    Cassaday said he later observed his colleagues returning to KBR’s camp with equipment they had stolen from the U.S. military, including refrigerators, artillery round detonators, two rocket launchers, and about 800 rounds of small arms ammunition. After he informed the KBR camp manager of the thefts, Marines searched the camp with dogs to recover the stolen property. For his trouble, Cassaday said, KBR security officers jailed him in his tent for two days. He then spent another four days in “protective custody” before being transferred, against his will, to work in a laundry.

    The practice of stealing equipment and supplies destined for the U.S. military was so pervasive that KBR employees invented a slang term to describe it: “drug deals.” But thefts were not limited to military supplies, said Linda Warren, another former KBR employee who testified at the hearing. Upon her arrival in Baghdad in 2004, she was shocked by the number of contractors involved in criminal activity. “KBR employees who were contracted to perform construction duties inside palaces and municipal buildings were looting,” she said. “Not only were they looting, but they had a system in place to get contraband out of the country so it could be sold on eBay. They stole artwork, rugs, crystal, and even melted down gold to make spurs for cowboy boots.” Like Cassaday, when she complained to her superiors about the thefts, she was punished. She said her vehicle was taken away, her movements were closely monitored, and her access to phones and the Internet were cut off. Eventually, she was transferred out of Baghdad.

    Perhaps more shocking than any of this was the accusation from Barry Halley, a former project manager for Worldwide Network Services, a Washington, D.C.-based firm that was working on subcontract for DynCorp. According to Halley, his site manager in Iraq, who he said was employed by a “major defense contractor,” moonlighted as the leader of a prostitution ring serving American contractors in Iraq that indirectly caused the death of a colleague. “A co-worker unrelated to the ring was killed when he was traveling in an unsecure car and shot performing a high-risk mission,” he told the committee. “I believe that my co-worker could have survived if he had been riding in an armored car. At the time, the armored car that he would otherwise have been riding in was being used by a manager to transport prostitutes from Kuwait to Baghdad.” The prostitution ring was shut down when the company’s home office learned of it, but, Halley said, the manager who controlled it retained his job, moving on to work another contract in Haiti.

    A theme running through all three witnesses’ testimony, aside from the pervasiveness of corruption among private contractors in Iraq, was that blowing the whistle on abuses rarely did any good. As is often the case with whistleblowers, speaking out was a shortcut to getting fired or demoted. “There’s a no-talk, no-speak policy in effect in Iraq about what goes on,” Halley said.

    According to Cassaday, although contractors for KBR are trained to report irregularities, the practice is generally frowned on by managers in the field. “In Houston at the training camp that I was at for two weeks before we went over to Iraq, they told us that, ‘Our door is always open. If you have a problem, just come on in,’” he said. “But what they don’t tell you is there’s a back door to that office. If you come in and you complain about something, you’re going to be going out that back door. You’re going to either be transferred someplace you don’t want to be, or you’re going to be fired.”

    Arriving nearly two weeks after the military awarded a 10-year logistical contract worth up to $150 billion to DynCorp, KBR, and a third firm, the DPC hearing was the thirteenth in a series designed to look into contractor fraud and abuse in the reconstruction of Iraq. Although, as a partisan committee, it has no powers to pass legislation, DPC members do refer allegations to the Department of Justice and the Pentagon’s Inspector General for further investigation, says Barry Piatt, the DPC’s communications director. Committee chairman Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota has been advocating for the creation of a permanent, bipartisan Wartime Contracting Commission to look into the types of accusations raised this week, but so far, says Piatt, Senate Republicans have blocked the measure. Until he is able to obtain the necessary 60 votes, Dorgan will continue to negotiate with the opposition in hopes of peeling away enough support to establish the commission. In the meantime, “the hearings that need to be done will be done,” says Piatt. “The Republicans won’t able to block that, and by continuing to do them, [Senator Dorgan] is showing the work that a committee like that would do.”

    Bruce Falconer is a reporter in Mother Jones’ Washington, DC, bureau.

From TruthOut.Org

 Go to Original

    Lawmakers Seek Probe of Pentagon PR Program
    By Andrew Miga
    The Associated Press

    Friday 02 May 2008

    Forty-one House members are calling on the Defense Department inspector general to investigate a public relations effort that relied on retired military officers to defend the administration’s Iraq war policies.

    ”When the Department of Defense misleads the American people by having them believe that they are listening to the views of objective military analysts when in fact these individuals are simply replaying DoD talking points, the department is clearly betraying the public trust,” the lawmakers wrote in a joint letter to Defense Department Inspector General Claude M. Kicklighter on Friday.

    Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who organized the letter, said it was important for the inspector general to find out how high-ranking officials within the Pentagon were allowed to operate a program aimed at deceiving the American people.

    ”Not only must the Inspector General now account for what it did and did not know about this state-sponsored propaganda effort, but they must also explain why, if they knew about the propaganda campaign, it was allowed to proceed,” DeLauro said. “Additionally, we are calling for the Inspector General to launch an investigation to ensure no detail surrounding this program remains hidden.”

    Retired officers who acted as military analysts for major news outlets were given plum access to the Pentagon, with regular briefings by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and a sponsored trip to the Guant‡namo Bay military prison in Cuba.

    The lawmakers are seeking information on whether the inspector general investigated the program or senior officials involved in the program. The House members also want to know if the inspector general considers the program to be illegal.

    The operation, which has been halted, was first reported by The New York Times.

*****************************

Pentagon halts feeding of information to retired officers while issue is reviewed

By Jeff Schogol, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, April 26, 2008

ARLINGTON, Va. - The Defense Department has temporarily stopped feeding information to retired military officers pending a review of the issue, said Robert Hastings, principal deputy assistant secretary of Defense for public affairs.

The New York Times first reported on Sunday that the Defense Department was giving information to retired officers serving as pundits for various media organizations in order to garner favorable media coverage.

Some of these retired officers saw their access to key decision-makers as possible business opportunities for the defense contractors they represent, according to the newspaper. The story also alleged that the officers who did not repeat the Bush administration’s official line were denied further access to information.

Hastings said he is concerned about allegations that the Defense Department’s relationship with the retired military analysts was improper.

“Following the allegations, the story that is printed in the New York Times, I directed my staff to halt, to suspend the activities that may be ongoing with retired military analysts to give me time to review the situation,” Hastings said in an interview with Stripes on Friday.

Hastings said he did not discuss the matter with Defense Secretary Robert Gates prior to making his decision. He could not say Friday how long this review might take.

“We’ll take the time to do it right,” he said.

On Thursday, U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., said in a speech that he was angered by the allegations raised in the New York Times’ story.

“There is nothing inherently wrong with providing information to the public and the press,” Skelton said. “But there is a problem if the Pentagon is providing special access to retired officers and then basically using them as pawns to spout the administration’s talking points of the day.”

Skelton, who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he was also disturbed by the ties between the military officers and defense firms.

“It hurts me to my core to think that there are those from the ranks of our retired officers who have decided to cash in and essentially prostitute themselves on the basis of their previous positions within the Department of Defense,” he said.

Hastings, who had not seen Skelton’s remarks before Friday’s interview, said he is unaware of the Defense Department’s past activities with retired military analysts. He took over his current post in March.

“I need a little time to kind of digest that and figure out what the path forward is,” he said.

Republicans Crossing Over to Vote in Democratic Contests
    By Larry Rohter
    The New York Times

    Saturday 03 May 2008

    Indianapolis - Until now, Shirley Morgan had always been the kind of voter the Republican Party thought it could count on. She comes from a family of staunch Republicans, has a son in the military and has supported Republican presidential candidates ever since she cast her first ballot, for Richard M. Nixon in 1972.

    But this year Mrs. Morgan exemplifies a different breed: the Republican crossing over to vote in the Democratic primary. Not only will she mark her ballot for Senator Barack Obama in the May 6 primary here, but she has also been canvassing for him in the heavily Republican suburbs of Hamilton County, just north of Indianapolis - the first time she has ever actively campaigned for a candidate.

    ”I used to like John McCain, but he’s aligning himself too closely with what Bush did, and that’s just not what I want for this country,” Mrs. Morgan, who is 56, said when asked to explain her rejection of the presumptive Republican nominee.

    Since the start of the primary and caucus season in January, Republican voters have been crossing over in increasing numbers to vote in Democratic contests - supplying up to 10 percent of the vote in states that allow such crossover voting - and they are expected to play a pivotal role in the fiercely contested primary here. What is less clear, however, is the motivation for their behavior: are they genuinely attracted by the two Democratic candidates? Or are they mischief-making spoilers, looking to prolong a divisive Democratic fight or support a candidate Mr. McCain can beat in November?

    Local Republican Party leaders in Indiana concede the attraction of the Democratic candidates to some of their party members. And interviews with roughly a dozen Republican voters in central Indiana suggest that they are driven mainly by concerns about the economy, with discontent over Bush administration policies driving their involvement in the Democratic race.

    ”Much as I like John McCain as a war hero, I am fearful he does not have the depth of experience to fix the economy,” said Darlene Boatman, 62, a just-retired sales clerk who favors Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. “We’re all struggling here to make ends meet. I haven’t had health care coverage in about 10 years and jobs are fewer and farther between. The economy is my biggest concern, and I think Hillary has the best understanding of how to pull off the recovery we need.”

    The drift has given some comfort to Democrats worried about the searing divisions in their party. Surveys of voters leaving the polls and official vote tabulations indicate that both Mr. Obama, of Illinois, and Mrs. Clinton, of New York, have benefited from the Republican crossover vote, though to different degrees and in patterns that vary by state.

    Initially, Mr. Obama seemed to be getting the bulk of the vote, attracting moderate Republicans who quickly came to be known as Obamacans and lacing his stump speech with references to them. But more recently, Mrs. Clinton’s share of the crossover vote has grown.

    In Wisconsin’s Feb. 19 contest, for example, Mr. Obama got about three-quarters of the votes cast by those identifying themselves as Republicans. In Texas’ March 4 primary, though, he and Mrs. Clinton split the Republican vote almost evenly, while in Mississippi on March 11, she outpolled him among Republicans by a three-to-one margin.

    Even some states without open primaries seem to have experienced crossover voting. In the Pennsylvania vote on April 22, voter surveys indicated that about 5 percent of those voting in the Democratic primary were Republicans who switched their party registration; they split their vote almost evenly between the two candidates.

    Here in Indiana, both Democratic candidates are sending surrogates to campaign in traditionally Republican areas they might have ignored in years past, including in Hamilton County, Indiana’s fastest-growing and most affluent county.

    ”We’re getting a lot of inquiries from Republicans asking how do you do it, how do you cross over,” Dan Parker, the Democratic Party state chairman, said in an interview here. “It’s been our No. 1 request for the past two months.”

    Clouding the picture, however, is a campaign by Rush Limbaugh, the radio talk show host, urging his listeners to cast their ballots for Mrs. Clinton “if they can stomach it,” in order to prolong the Democratic race and weaken the eventual winner.

    ”They’re in the midst of tearing themselves apart right now,” Mr. Limbaugh said in an interview with Fox News just before the Texas and Ohio primaries on March 4. “It’s fascinating to watch, and it’s all going to stop if Hillary loses.”

    But Republican voters interviewed here said that Mr. Limbaugh was not a factor in their decision to vote in the Democratic primary, and that it was the issues that propelled them.

    ”I disagree with the Democrats on things like abortion and immigration, but I feel that the Republican Party I grew up in is out of touch with the middle-class family,” said Dave Nichols, 40, the owner of a small memorabilia business in Fort Wayne, who has heard of Mr. Limbaugh’s effort and is supporting Mrs. Clinton.

    Mr. Nichols said he had no health insurance and lived on a block where three houses were in foreclosure. “McCain doesn’t have an economic plan,” he said “We’re in a recession and need relief now, but he wants to keep spending all that money over there in Iraq when there are so many things we need here at home, from infrastructure to health care.”

    Republican officials like Murray Clark, the state party chairman in Indiana, say that the extent of the crossover phenomenon has been “greatly exaggerated” and that in any case it does not serve the party’s interests, because it draws potential Republican voters away from deciding other, more local races.

    Mr. Clark acknowledged what he called “heightened interest” in the Democratic primary, but argued that Republican-leaning independents, rather than “reliable and consistently Republican voters,” accounted for the bulk of the shift.

    ”It’s probably a stretch to call it a crossover vote,” Mr. Clark said. “This is a unique situation. The circus is in town, and people want to go. This provides them an opportunity. But when the circus leaves town, we’ll have six months of opportunities to contrast their candidate with ours.”

    Indeed, some of the crossover Republicans here who back Mr. Obama said they would vote for Mr. McCain in November if Mrs. Clinton ends up getting the Democratic nomination, while some of those supporting Mrs. Clinton said the same of Mr. Obama. But others said they simply could not imagine gravitating back to the Republican camp in this election.

    ”I would probably not vote, or maybe look at a third party,” said Becky Kapsalis, who lives in Carmel, Ind., and describes herself as “a 70-year-old white woman for Barack Obama.”

    ”I respect McCain for what he’s done, his patriotism and devotion,” Ms. Kapsalis said, “but I just don’t think he has the heart to lead us, and he doesn’t speak to my heart the way this Barack Obama man does.”

  ——-

Go to Original

    Convention Preparations Prompt Suit by ACLU
    By Kirk Johnson
    The New York Times

    Saturday 03 May 2008

    Denver - Groups planning parades or protests at the Democratic National Convention filed a lawsuit here on Friday charging that the Secret Service and the City of Denver are threatening free speech - not because of tight security rules, but by the very lack of them.

    The suit, filed in Federal District Court, says that delays in establishing legal parade routes, and unanswered questions about security arrangements around the convention center, are undermining efforts to plan for events when Democrats gather here from Aug. 25 to 28.

    Mark Silverstein, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, which is representing 12 groups in the lawsuit, said they had no choice but to turn to the court. With just four months until the convention, the groups want a judge to speed the scheduling and the issuing of rules governing activities outside the Pepsi Center.

    At the Democratic convention in Boston in 2004, First Amendment challenges could not be addressed by judges, Mr. Silverstein said, because security measures were announced too late.

    ”In Boston, the trial court and the court of appeals said there was not enough time for full evaluation and not enough time to carry out any orders the courts might issue,” Mr. Silverstein said. “For that reason, we are filing now and asking the court to place this case on a top-priority schedule.”

    Specifically, the suit asks the court to order the Secret Service to immediately provide information to the city that will allow Denver officials to begin considering permit requests for parades and specifying a “demonstration zone” near the convention center. The suit also asks the court to review those regulations for violations of free speech protection.

    A spokesman for the Secret Service, Ed Donovan, declined to comment on the suit or the agency’s timetable for communicating with the city on security rules.

    The attorney for the City of Denver, David Fine, said in a statement that the city was not trying to thwart free speech.

    ”No one has been denied the right to protest,” Mr. Fine said. “In fact, you will see a vigorous exercise of free speech during the convention in many ways and in many places. That being said, we will review the plaintiffs’ papers and respond as necessary.”

    The groups suing include several that plan to draw attention to various issues and causes, like the Troops Out Now Coalition, which opposes the war in Iraq. Another group, Citizens for Obama, wants to march on behalf of a favored presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

    One member of the lawsuit coalition, Glenn Spagnuolo, from a group called Recreate 68, which is planning multiple demonstrations on issues including health care and the war, said at a news conference that he thought the delays had been deliberate.

    Every passing week of uncertainty, Mr. Spagnuolo said, hobbles the efforts to recruit people to come to Denver and speak their minds.

    ”If they announce it very close to August that, yes, you will have your permits, these groups are now shut out of hotels, shut out of flights, buses are booked to come to Denver and it’s impossible for them to logistically come here and exercise their First Amendment right,” Mr. Spagnuolo said. “In our opinion, it’s a planned tactic.”

    The suit itself does not make that claim.

    Mr. Silverstein said, “We have to take the city at its word that it doesn’t have enough information from the Secret Service to process the permits, and that’s why we’re asking the court to get the two parties together.”

  ——-

From Government Accountability Project:  http://www.whistleblower.org/template/index.cfm

Former Program Managers for Private Security Company ArmorGroup Detail their 2007 Fight to Ensure Adequate Protection 

Last week, GAP and a private law firm filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of two program managers who worked for the private security company ArmorGroup. That company was responsible for ensuring security for the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. The managers were fired in June 2007 for raising concerns about the integrity of the security program and for disclosing those concerns to the State Department.

Our clients have not been given detailed information by the State Department as to whether corrections to the problems they reported have been made.

The lawsuit was filed against ArmorGroup North America (AGNA) and its parent company, ArmorGroup International (AGI) of Britain. AGI is an international private security company that provides protection for government facilities, institutions and personnel around the world. The lawsuit alleges that AGNA won the security contract by significantly overstating its capabilities, and overall put profit concerns ahead of the security needs of the Embassy and its personnel. 

Click here for the ABCNews.com article detailing the lawsuit  

Click here for a copy of the lawsuit  

Just Between Us
    By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
    Newsweek

    Wednesday 30 April 2008

Telecoms and the Bush administration talked about how to keep their surveillance program under wraps.

    The Bush administration is refusing to disclose internal e-mails, letters and notes showing contacts with major telecommunications companies over how to persuade Congress to back a controversial surveillance bill, according to recently disclosed court documents.

    The existence of these documents surfaced only in recent days as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by a privacy group called the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The foundation (alerted to the issue in part by a NEWSWEEK story last fall) is seeking information about communications among administration officials, Congress and a battery of politically well-connected lawyers and lobbyists hired by such big telecom carriers as AT&T and Verizon. Court papers recently filed by government lawyers in the case confirm for the first time that since last fall unnamed representatives of the telecoms phoned and e-mailed administration officials to talk about ways to block more than 40 civil suits accusing the companies of privacy violations because of their participation in a secret post-9/11 surveillance program ordered by the White House.

    At the time, the White House was proposing a surveillance bill - strongly backed by the telecoms - that included a sweeping provision that would grant them retroactive immunity from any lawsuits accusing the companies of wrongdoing related to the surveillance program.

    Although a version of this proposal has passed the Senate, it has so far been blocked in the House by Democrats who are demanding greater public disclosure about the scope of the administration’s post-9/11 surveillance of individuals inside the United States. Negotiations between House Democrats, the Senate and administration representatives over a possible compromise have made little progress so far. Capitol Hill officials now say Congress may not get around to final action on new surveillance legislation until right before a one-year temporary law expires in August - right before the presidential nominating conventions.

    The recent responses in the Electronic Frontier Foundation lawsuit provide no new information about the administration’s controversial post-9/11 electronic surveillance program itself, but they do shed some light on the degree of anxiety within the telecom industry over the litigation generated by the carriers’ participation in the secret spying. One court declaration, for example, confirms the existence of notes showing that a telecom representative called an Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) lawyer last fall to talk about “various options” to block the lawsuits, including “such options as court orders and legislation.” Another declaration refers to a letter and “four fax cover sheets” exchanged between the telecoms and ODNI over the surveillance matter. Yet another discloses e-mails in which lawyers for the telecoms and the Justice Department “seek or discuss recommendations on legislative strategy.”

    The declarations were filed in court by government lawyers only after U.S. Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco, who is overseeing the case, ordered them to fully process the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s FOIA request for documents showing lobbying contacts by the telecoms. The government initially resisted even responding to the FOIA request, but White found that disclosure was in the public interest because it “may enable the public to participate meaningfully in the debate over” the pending surveillance legislation.

    But while complying with the judge’s order to confirm the existence of some documents, administration officials have told the judge they cannot actually disclose the documents themselves, in part because to do so would undermine national security. Even to confirm the identity of any of the carriers with whom administration officials have discussed the surveillance issue would implicitly identify the carriers that participated in the program and therefore “would provide our adversaries with a road map” that would help them thwart surveillance against them, according to a court declaration filed by Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Burgess, director of the ODNI’s intelligence staff.

    Spokesmen for the Justice Department and ODNI today declined comment to NEWSWEEK on the grounds that neither agency will talk about pending litigation.

    The revelation of the existence of the documents comes at a time when Congress is bracing for what is expected to be a grueling summerlong debate over the surveillance measure. Administration officials say that unless Congress acts by this summer, existing court orders permitting surveillance of suspected overseas terrorists will expire, threatening the U.S. government’s ability to keep track of potential plots against the homeland. If new legislation is not enacted before the current stop-gap law expires, Republicans may try to use this as an election issue against Democrats.

    The debate over a new surveillance authorization is likely to be complicated by figures showing sharp increases in the government’s electronic eavesdropping on U.S. citizens. One report filed with the office of the administrator of the U.S. Courts shows that standard wiretaps approved by federal and state courts jumped 20 percent last year, from 1,839 in 2006 to 2,208 in 2007. Later this week another report is expected to also show increases in secret wiretaps and break-ins approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in terror and espionage cases. But even these secret wiretaps and break-ins - estimated to be about 2,300 - tell only part of the story. They don’t include other secret methods the government uses to collect personal information on U.S. citizens.

 House Committee Threatens Rove With Subpoena
    By Ben Evans
    The Associated Press

    Friday 02 May 2008

    Washington - The House Judiciary Committee threatened Thursday to subpoena former White House adviser Karl Rove if he does not agree by May 12 to testify about former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman’s corruption case.

    In a letter to Rove’s attorney, committee Democrats called it “completely unacceptable” that the Republican political strategist has rejected the panel’s request for sworn testimony even as he discusses the matter publicly through the media.

    ”We can see no justification for his refusal to speak on the record to the committee,” the letter states. “We urge you and your client to reconsider … or we will have no choice but to consider the use of compulsory process.”

    Committee Democrats are investigating whether Rove and Republican appointees at the Justice Department influenced Siegelman’s prosecution to kill his chances for re-election. It is part of a broader inquiry into whether U.S. attorneys were fired for not aggressively pursuing cases against Democrats.

    Siegelman, a Democrat who served one term as governor after being elected in 1998, was convicted in 2006 on bribery and other charges and sentenced to more than seven years in prison. He was recently released on bond pending appeal.

    Last year, Alabama attorney and one-time Republican campaign volunteer Jill Simpson, told the committee under oath that she heard conversations among GOP operatives in 2002 suggesting that Rove was pushing the Justice Department to pursue a conviction against Siegelman. She also has said Rove asked her in 2001 to find evidence that Siegelman was cheating on his wife.

    Rove, who frequently worked in Alabama politics before orchestrating President Bush’s White House campaigns, has denied having anything to do with the case. In a recent magazine article, he called Simpson a “complete lunatic” and said he had never heard of her.

    The career prosecutors who handled Siegelman’s case also have denied any political influence.

    Thursday’s threat marks the latest development in a lengthy standoff between President Bush and Congress over testimony from current and former White House staffers.

    The committee has issued or threatened subpoenas to more than half a dozen administration officials and is suing White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet Miers for refusing to comply with subpoenas on the U.S. attorney firings.

    The White House has generally maintained that their testimony is off-limits from congressional oversight under executive privilege.

    Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, maintains that Rove must defer to that position. But as the White House has offered on other matters, Luskin wrote the committee this week that Rove would discuss the Siegelman case on the condition that his comments not be under oath and not be transcribed.

    Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., and several other lawmakers rejected the offer, saying such an interview “will not permit us to obtain a straightforward and clear record.”

  ——-

EPA Official Ousted While Fighting Dow
    By Michael Hawthorne
    The Chicago Tribune

    Friday 02 May 2008

    Saginaw, Michigan - The battle over dioxin contamination in this economically stressed region had been raging for years when a top Bush administration official turned up the pressure on Dow Chemical to clean it up.

    On Thursday, following months of internal bickering over Mary Gade’s interactions with Dow, the administration forced her to quit as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Midwest office, based in Chicago.

    Gade told the Tribune she resigned after two aides to national EPA administrator Stephen Johnson took away her powers as regional administrator and told her to quit or be fired by June 1.

    The call came as the Tribune was preparing to publish a story about the dioxin issue and Gade’s crusade.

    Jonathan Shradar, an EPA spokesman in Washington, said Gade has been placed on administrative leave until June 1. He declined further comment, saying the agency does not publicly discuss personnel matters.

    Gade has been locked in a heated dispute with Dow about long-delayed plans to clean up dioxin-saturated soil and sediment that extends 50 miles beyond its Midland, Mich., plant into Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron. The company dumped the highly toxic and persistent chemical into local rivers for most of the last century.

    Many local residents see Dow as a lifeline in region plagued by plant closings and layoffs. But all along the two wide streams that cut through this old industrial town, signs warn people to keep off dioxin-contaminated riverbanks and to avoid eating fish pulled from the fast-moving waters. Officials have taken the swings down in one riverside park to discourage kids from playing there. Men in rubber boots and thick gloves occasionally knock on doors, asking residents whether they can dig up a little soil in the yard.

    Gade, appointed by President Bush as regional EPA administrator in September 2006, invoked emergency powers last summer to order the company to remove three hotspots of dioxin near its Midland headquarters.

    She demanded more dredging in November, when it was revealed that dioxin levels along a park in Saginaw were 1.6 million parts per trillion, the highest amount ever found in the U.S.

    Dow then sought to cut a deal on a more comprehensive cleanup. But Gade ended the negotiations in January, saying Dow was refusing to take action necessary to protect public health and wildlife. Dow responded by appealing to officials in Washington, according to heavily redacted letters the Tribune obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

    Regional EPA administrators typically have wide latitude to enforce environmental laws, but in April Gade drew fire from officials in Washington after she sent contractors to test soil in a Saginaw neighborhood where Dow had found high dioxin levels. The levels in one Saginaw yard were nearly six times higher than the federal cleanup standard, and 65 times higher than what Michigan considers acceptable.

    On Thursday, Gade said of her resignation: “There’s no question this is about Dow. I stand behind what I did and what my staff did. I’m proud of what we did.”

    Dioxin, measured in trillionths of a gram because it is so toxic, was a manufacturing byproduct of the herbicide Agent Orange and other chlorinated chemicals. Company documents show Dow knew by the mid-1960s that it could make people sick or even kill them. Citing years of independent studies, the EPA says dioxin causes cancer and disrupts the immune and reproductive systems, even at very low levels.

    Concerns about dioxin contamination were behind two of the most infamous environmental disasters in U.S. history: the evacuations of the Love Canal neighborhood in upstate New York and the entire town of Times Beach, Mo.

    But in the Saginaw area, cleanup remains stalled, mainly because Dow asserts the contamination does not threaten people or wildlife.

    ”There is all of this mystique about dioxin,” said John Musser, a Dow spokesman. “Just because it’s there doesn’t mean there is an imminent health threat.”

    Dow says it has agreed in principle to restore polluted areas but is contesting how it should be done - which critics view as more stalling.

    ”Denial and delay has been part of Dow’s game plan for years,” said Michelle Hurd Riddick, a Saginaw nurse and member of the Lone Tree Council, a local environmental group. “They still haven’t delivered.”

    Dow was forced to stop releasing dioxin into waterways in the mid-1980s. But when high levels of dioxin were found in fish from Saginaw Bay around the same time, Dow repeatedly claimed it wasn’t responsible, saying the chemical had settled into the water from air pollution caused by forest fires and wood-burning fireplaces.

    Dow and Michigan officials took until 2003 to negotiate legal guidelines for a comprehensive cleanup. The company later paid to scour the interiors of more than 300 homes and spread wood chips outside to reduce exposure to contaminated soil. At the same time, Dow’s political allies tried to relax the state’s dioxin standards.

    More recently, Dow financed a University of Michigan study that the company and its supporters say shows dioxin in soil and sediment has little to do with levels of the chemical in people. The EPA cautions the study hasn’t been peer-reviewed and appears to underestimate health risks.

    ”Dow has powerful sway in that area and in the state as a whole,” said Dave Dempsey, a former Michigan activist who was environment adviser in the 1980s to then-Gov. James Blanchard. “But with all of the information out there about dioxin, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for them to avoid doing something.”

    At the center of the latest dispute was Gade, who as a corporate attorney had represented big companies like Dow against environmental regulators. Her aggressive action against Dow surprised the company, local activists and her Washington bosses. But she still won high marks from EPA officials during her last performance evaluation.

    The steps Gade took were influenced in part by her experience as an EPA staffer during the early 1980s, when the agency’s top official in Washington was forced to resign after he allowed Dow to censor an EPA study documenting dioxin’s dangers.

    ”We have a responsibility to make sure people are living in a healthy and safe environment,” Gade said. “This problem has been out there for more than 30 years, and it’s unconscionable that action hasn’t been taken.”

    ”We know Dow is responsible,” said Ralph Dollhopf, associate director of the EPA’s regional Superfund office. “The question now is when something will finally be done about it.”

    In Saginaw, some are reluctant to question one of the area’s biggest employers and benefactors. They tout Dow’s 3,100 manufacturing jobs and its donations to community and arts groups, including its sponsorship of a struggling civic arena, now known as the Dow Event Center.

    Bob VanDeventer, president of the Saginaw County Chamber of Commerce, said local leaders are trying to fight the perception that dioxin makes the area unsafe. He argued “not one illness” can be attributed to dioxin and insisted the only way someone could be exposed to dioxin is if they “eat the dirt.”

    ”Michigan is in the tank economically already,” VanDeventer said. “For us, this situation certainly creates more uncertainty as long as it remains unresolved.”

    Others who were drawn to living along the picturesque Tittabawassee and Saginaw Rivers fear the contamination will make it impossible to sell their homes or will get them sick.

    For more than 40 years, Lloyd and Joy Cooper have lived in a cottage near where the tree-lined rivers meet. Contractors for the EPA and Dow have tested their yard at least four times in two years.

    In February Dow told federal regulators they had found dioxin levels of 5,900 parts per trillion in the Collins’ neighborhood, above the federal cleanup standard of 1,000 parts per trillion. Michigan’s far more stringent limit is 90 parts per trillion.

    ”It gets pretty frustrating,” said Lloyd Cooper, a retired contractor. “It seems like they’re dragging this out as long as they can. If they’re going to do something, do it and get it over with for good.”

  ——-